I'm generally opposed to government interference in these types of matters, especially at a time where corrupt capitalistic scumbags have all the power in America. But the ESRB and the industry as a whole brought this on themselves by not seeing this potential trainwreck coming from miles away. It was only a matter of time before someone got too greedy with microtransactions. I doubt any actual laws will be written up, but the public sentiment that caused this commotion hopefully puts the fear of god into the industry so they don't try to pull this shit again and make actual design changes.
This definitely isn't the end for microtransactions. Battlefront 2 has all the ingredients to create this perfect storm of fanatical rage. Gamers are predispose to hate EA at the best of times, the tensions regarding DLC and what constitutes good value for a $60 game have brewing at some level for years, and EA had already screwed the pooch with Star Wars just a couple weeks earlier. I can't think of many things a company could do to stoke internet fires more vigorously than publicly bumble with a franchise that has been beloved for forty years.
There's too much money in microtransactions for the industry to give up on them. I've probably spent 20-30 dollars on add-ons for Titanfall 2 and Rocket League, but those are all cosmetic and each game plays great without them. If this saga has any lasting effect it will be in dissuading developers (or the publishers that likely push for stuff like this) from tying multiplayer progression so directly to the contents of your bank account. Battlefront 2 just got the numbers completely wrong, and when you're allowing players to "cheat the system" by throwing more money at the problem, you have to thread a very small needle in order to not piss people off. Someone with more subtlety will try this again eventually.
Amy Hennig's take on Star Wars was one of the most exciting ideas in gaming for me. To see that it's probably dead because it wouldn't make room for more loot boxes is fucking depressing. Every game shouldn't try to be Destiny. Big, bad EA strikes again.
The term "sci-fi" clearly has a nebulous definition considering what made it on to the poll and the discussions in this thread. A couple of my favorite movies on that list - Children of Men and Mad Max - don't fit my personal description for the genre. I voted for Under the Skin.
I just played an hour of it and I had a decent enough time with it. The feel of the guns took a couple matches to get used to, but I was fine after that. The space battles were definitely the highlight for me, flying through the sky in a X-Wing will never get old, although the decision to not invert the vehicle controls by default is weird. It seems really easy to die in this mode, but that might just be me not being that good at the game yet. The quality of the single-player will determine if I buy this game this year or not (shout out to Janina). I really hope it's good. There should be more good Star Wars games.
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